The Axis Grand Strategy

Book excerpt: This startling book reveals the military and political plans of the Axis in the very words of its own generals and admirals. The advent of Adolf Hitler has Germany’s supreme leader marked the inauguration of the deliberate plans for world domination by the Third Reich. These plans were not secret; other nations simply refused to take them seriously. They followed the tradition of one hundred years of German military thinking form Clausewitz to Ludendorff. They were implicit in Mein Kampf. During the years from 1933 to 1939 they were worked out in detail by those who today are in charge of the Nazi armies. These writing, in fact, contain the Blueprints for the Total War. Now, for the first time, they have been assembled, translated and made available to all who want to understand the nature of the enemy with whom they are engaged in a life and death struggle. The Axis Grand Strategy describes the plan for modern war from the earliest political and psychological preparation to the ultimate campaign of military terrorism and destruction. The book discusses the building of the modern army—an army which will make full use of all modern technical advance and which will develop the strategy of the irresistible, lightning onslaught. The duration of the armed attack, the piercing of modern fortifications, the co-ordination of aircraft and armed forces, the grand strategy of the large-scale offensive—these and many other military subjects are fully discussed here. These discussions provide the chapter-and-verse authority for the actual campaigns as waged in Poland, Belgium, France, Africa, and Russia. The grand strategy, however is not confined merely to military ends. For total war in the Nazis’ scheme of thinking and acting means utilization o political and economic weapons, fifth column penetration and geopolitical strategy that reached far beyond Europe to the lands boarding the great oceans. One writer, in fact, in discussing the Far Eastern strategy actually predicts the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Axis Grand Strategy is a book for all who as civilians or soldiers are determined to play an intelligent part in the total war which is now ours.